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Who is Les Ebdon, and why does he matter?

Lib Dem MP and Business Secretary Vince Cable is headed for a fight with David Cameron over the employment of Les Ebdon. Cable wants to employ him as head of the organisation that monitors higher education services (called the Office for Fair Access, or OFFA), but lots of Conservative MPs and Higher Education officials are dead against it.

They aren’t keen on giving Ebdon the job because he’s been critical of lots of their recent changes to higher education, including the tripling of tuition fees. One anonymous Tory MP was quoted in the Telegraph, saying “This guy is basically against government policy and is not suitable for this position.” Concern that he'll fight back against future changes has made many government officials certain that he's the wrong man for the job.

Ebdon has also written openly about the value of what many people consider to be ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees like fashion and media studies, and has threatened to hit universities that don’t accept enough students from disadvantaged backgrounds where it hurts most – in the pocket.

If he gets the job, he’s threatened to use what he calls the ‘nuclear option’ – unis would be forbidden from charging the maximum £9,000 per year fees unless they met strict targets for making a university education accessible to all.

According to the Guardian, the poorest 40% of students are seven times less likely to get in to the top 20 universities than the richest 10%, and the government needs to be committed to making sure that that gap shrinks.

Whoever ends up in charge of OFFA will need to be committed to ensuring that the process of getting into uni is as fair as possible. Representatives from private schools and the top 20 research universities are fighting the employment of Professor Ebdon, but Vince Cable remains determined to appoint him. He’ll be fighting it out with David Cameron and other senior MPs in the next few days. The post needs to be filled by April, when the current head, Sir Martin Harris, will step down.